Significant Other

 Significant Other is an uninteresting pod people sci-fi suspense film, the sort that's kind of hard to write about because it's so mild that it's hard to squeeze anything interesting out of it.

 We get a falling meteor on the very first scene. That's a bad sign, since we know meteors are never up to any good. Unless they're carrying a superman, but this is not that type of movie.

 Soon afterwards Harry (Jake Lacy) and Ruth (Maika Monroe) venture into the national park the where the meteorite lies. Harry's trying to push Ruth out of her comfort zone, as she seems to have some hiking-related phobia (ambulasilvaphobia?). Harry's a paternalistic dick, though at least he seems to be well-meaning, I guess.

 The characters are one of the movie's main problems, as despite Ruth's anxieties (she has a couple panic attacks) both of them are uninteresting and their dialog is pretty drab. Even worse, they pretty much lack any discernible chemistry; Ruth only seems to tolerate Harry - and it's not even as if the movie can mine that pathos, since it's really hard to root for the guy. There's not much reason to care for whatever happens to either of them or to their (kind of unhealthy) relationship.

 In any case, all that is rendered a moot point because soon there's a creepy deer stalking them, looking at them funny. Then Ruth wanders into the woods, and when Harry finally finds her she's acting all weird. I'm going to try and avoid spoilers, but it's going to be hard to speak about the movie without giving away its only interesting thing going on here, so if for some reason you want to watch this... well, skip to after the picture.

 There's a decent twist which relies on the movie being selective on how it presents events (not to mention a big ask of suspended disbelief), but at least it's kind of a neat play on expectations. From there on we've got an alien doppelganger thing chasing their subsumed identity's lover across the woods, with a statistically ridiculous chance encounter with some fellow hikers to get a body count and a piss-poor attempt at twisting the body snatcher formula to give the movie a new-ish wrinkle.

 Writing/directing team Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (who previously did the way more lively Villains) keep things moving and looking professional, and the woodland backdrop is lovely (often shown in drone shots, with ominous music; cinematography: Matt Mitchell). And for whatever it's worth, on a moment-to-moment basis the film's not terrible, just... well, kind of meh. With some pretty bad moments strewn in.
 There's some blood - scratch that, there's no blood, but there's some gore, which is fairly rare. The aliens in this movie have a weapon that performs a type of amputation I abhor, the sort of where you can see the cut organs with the precision of a medical textbook, but there's no blood anywhere. I can give it the benefit of doubt and say it's down to the blade's extraterrestrial properties... but it still looks pretty bad, so why not add in any oozing/jetting blood or even better, something weirder?

 As for the science fiction trappings - well, expecting any sort of scientific rigour or neat ideas out of a movie where people keep magically finding each other or whatever they need in the middle of a huge wilderness might be too big an ask. This is strictly a creature feature.

 

 There's a ploy to kill the alien which is almost respectable in its stupidity, and a few over the top moments which hint at a more fun picture hiding somewhere in there; Unfortunately most of the movie is fairly dumb and extremely staid, and that's a terrible combination.